OFFstep Alternative: Label Infrastructure, Not an Artist Subscription

Short answer: an OFFstep account holds artists, and a LabelGrid account holds labels. Their Basic plan is $18 a year for one artist, with unlimited albums and no track meter, which is cheaper than anything we sell to an artist releasing their own records. Ours runs from 1 label on Solo to 50 on Custom Distribution, each label carrying its own defaults, distribution settings and statement lines. Every OFFstep value in the table below is quoted from one of their own published pages.

Asked whether one account can hold sub-accounts, the OFFstep help centre answers “No. If you are a label and need this tool, please consider submitting a request to join ONErpm.”, so a label that needs sub-accounts is asked to apply to a sister brand (OFFstep is ONErpm’s DIY brand, and their Terms of Use name the same operating company, Verge Records International Inc.). On LabelGrid the next step is the next rung of a published ladder: Solo, Basic, Pro, Custom Distribution, then four API tiers, every one of them priced on the website, with Custom Distribution and Custom API publishing a starting price, and past the top the deal goes custom.

Products on one backend

DDEX ERN versions

Yours on your own DSP deals, on Custom Distribution and the API tiers

Founded

Every OFFstep value below is quoted or summarised from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read them. Where their pages do not state a dimension, or where our own public documentation cannot answer it in kind, the row is left out rather than guessed at.

Each of the 9 OFFstep values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: offstep.com/, offstep.com/faq/can-i-create-a-sub-account-to-manage-the-albums-in-my-account/, offstep.com/faq/does-offstep-offer-subscription-refunds/, offstep.com/faq/if-i-dont-renew-my-subscription-will-my-music-still-be-available-on-streaming-platforms/, offstep.com/faq/is-there-a-limit-to-how-many-albums-i-can-upload-on-my-account/, offstep.com/faq/what-percentage-will-i-be-paid-for-my-releases/, offstep.com/plans-and-pricing/, offstep.com/platform-features/. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

Both companies charge a flat annual fee rather than a commission on streaming. The OFFstep Terms make a “recurring annual subscription fee” a condition of access, covering “Content distribution, maintenance, reporting, and artist support services”, and LabelGrid’s Custom Distribution and API tiers are flat yearly fees too, so the shape itself is not the argument.

On retention the numbers run their way at the entry level. An OFFstep customer keeps 100% of revenue from streaming and downloads and 80% of revenue from YouTube, Meta and TikTok; a LabelGrid customer keeps 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro, and 80% of Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals, which is their UGC rate to the cent. A customer on Custom Distribution or an API tier keeps 95% of standard-DSP royalties earned through LabelGrid’s own deals and 100% of what they earn on their own DSP deals or their own Merlin membership.

On our side the fee buys the account other people’s releases run through: royalty accounting with automated splits and per-artist statements from Basic up, dashboard streaming analytics on every plan, DDEX ERN import on the API plans and Custom Distribution, and Imprint, the white-label portal on your own domain. For one artist with one catalogue, their $18 is the better buy.

Royalty accounting

Automated splits and per-artist statements from Basic up and on every API tier.

Streaming analytics

Five dashboard views on every plan and every account, with filters you set per store and per period.

Release review

A person checks every release on a distribution plan before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Delivery inclusions

Dolby Atmos and hi-res masters go out on every distribution plan and API tier at no extra charge.

LabelGrid publishes a WordPress plugin in the plugin directory, an open-source MCP server on npm under MIT, and a companion CLI, all three running on the same public API. The plugin syncs releases, artists and download gates into WordPress every six hours and is available to every account at no additional cost, with no API plan needed; the MCP server and the CLI need an API plan and a token.

Our self-serve ladder is published in full: Solo, Basic and Pro, each sized by a track limit and a label limit, and every self-serve plan starts with a 7-day free trial. Solo carries one label, Basic three, Pro five; Solo and Basic move up a tier at their limits and Pro charges $0.15 per track per year past its own. OFFstep meters the other axis and does not meter the catalogue at all, with unlimited albums on any paid plan and the artist count setting the tier.

What arrives with a distribution plan is worth listing. A person checks the metadata, the rights and the audio on every release before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals. YouTube Content ID registration is available, with Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals split 80% to the customer and a 20% fee. Dolby Atmos and hi-res masters are delivered at no extra charge. Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier, so a collaborator is paid from the platform rather than out of your own bank app. Solo carries neither.

Manual review

A person checks the metadata and the rights on every release before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Content ID

YouTube Content ID registration, with UGC and Content ID revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals split 80% to you and a 20% fee.

Splits and statements

Automated splits and per-artist statements from Basic up and on every API tier, not on Solo.

Free trial

Every self-serve plan starts with a 7-day free trial.

Two shapes, and each one costs the other something. An OFFstep account puts artists under one login; a LabelGrid account puts labels, or whole workspaces, under one operator.

An OFFstep account is metered by artist count: one artist on Basic at $18 a year, up to two on Intermediate at $48, from four on Advanced at $96, and up to 120 artists on one account with a larger Advanced package, whose price their pricing page does not state. Advanced is also the tier that can select Ringtones or Neighboring Rights delivery and the tier carrying Custom Reports. Asked about sub-accounts, their help centre answers “No.”

A LabelGrid account holds labels, 1 on Solo, 3 on Basic, 5 on Pro and 50 on Custom Distribution, each label with its own default genres, P-line and C-line, outlet settings and its own column on the royalty statement. The API tiers count a different meter, end-customer portals, at 5 on Starter API, 25 on Growth API, 100 on Scale API and unlimited on Custom API, each one a full workspace with its own logins. Imprint is the white-label portal, your brand on your own domain, quoted separately.

The published ladder is the floor of a conversation rather than its ceiling. Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks by default and the cap is raised in the deal, up to unlimited; an operation running thousands of single-label artists is the worked example, and bulk label pricing is what it gets. The caps and the ceilings are negotiable, and so is the platform fee. The numbers inside a signed deal are confidential, so we will not publish them here.

What our shape costs a reader is worth naming. A LabelGrid label customer does not get a tier of artists to supervise from one login, and for one artist with one catalogue our structure is overhead they will never touch.

The API documentation is public and readable without a login, and three API tiers are priced on the website with Custom API publishing a starting price. The sandbox is narrower: LabelGrid enables it as part of the API upgrade, so it opens once the plan is active rather than before you buy. DDEX ERN import, as a one-time catalogue load or a continuous feed over SFTP or S3, runs on the API plans and on Custom Distribution, and we support ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2.

The meters are ours to own: a track limit, an end-customer portal limit rising from 5 on Starter API to unlimited on Custom API, and on the three standard tiers a monthly cap on royalties processed of $35,000, $115,000 and $350,000. Sustained excess carries no overage fee and starts a tier-upgrade conversation instead. Each standard tier can add one fixed pack of extra label portals through support, 5 on Starter API, 10 on Growth API and 25 on Scale API.

Their 27 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not mention a distribution API, a sandbox, webhooks, DDEX ERN ingest, a white-label or reseller portal sold by OFFstep, SOBO or an MCP server. That describes what their published material covers, and an artist releasing their own record needs none of it.

Public API docs

Read the endpoints and the data model before anyone at LabelGrid knows your name.

Published API pricing

Three API tiers priced on the website, with Custom API showing a starting price.

Sandbox access

LabelGrid enables the sandbox at the API upgrade, so it opens once the plan is active.

Open-source tooling

An MIT-licensed MCP server on npm and the public MCP registry, plus a companion CLI.

Three places where their published terms beat ours. A reader sitting in any of them should buy from OFFstep, and we would rather say so here than have you find out later.

OFFstep Basic is “$ 18 / year” for “1 artist per account”, and their help centre answers the upload question with “No. You can upload as many albums as you want.” There is no track meter and no per-release fee. Further up the ladder, Intermediate is “$ 48 / year” for “Up to 2 artists per account” and Advanced “$ 96 / year” and “Starts at 4 artists per account”. For one artist putting out their own records, that is cheaper and simpler than anything on our price list.

Their help centre states it in one sentence: “you keep 100% of your revenue from streaming and downloads and 80% of your revenue from YouTube, Meta, and TikTok.” A LabelGrid customer keeps 85% of standard-DSP royalties on the entry plans and 90% on Pro, and 80% of Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals. So the UGC half is the same rate at both companies, and the streaming half is theirs at $18 a year for one artist.

OFFstep publishes one: a refund where “The request is made within 14 days of the plan activation date”, the same window applying to renewals and upgrades, where “The subscription has not been used;” and the account complies with their terms. Their note adds that “Payment processing fees (Stripe fees) are non-refundable.” LabelGrid publishes no refund route at all, and on standard plans fees already paid for the term are not refunded.

We keep this section in every comparison we publish; a comparison you cannot trust is worth nothing.

Choose OFFstep if you are one artist, or two, releasing your own records and you want the bill to stay small. $18 a year for one artist with unlimited albums is a real price for a real product, and at that size our track limits and label limits are structure you will never touch.

Choose OFFstep if you want a published approval-and-delivery figure before you upload: their homepage says music is approved and delivered “In most cases” within 48 hours, and LabelGrid publishes no turnaround figure of its own. Choose OFFstep if you want the option of a refund in the first fortnight, on the conditions their help centre sets out.

And choose OFFstep if the thing you need next is another artist slot rather than a label, a workspace or an API token. Their Advanced ladder goes to 120 artists on one account, which is a lot of room on the axis they meter.

You run labels

An account holds 1 label on Solo rising to 50 on Custom Distribution, each with its own settings and statements.

You pay collaborators

Automated splits from Basic up pay a collaborator from the platform, with a statement per artist.

You resell distribution

The API tiers carry 5, 25, 100 or unlimited end-customer portals, each a full workspace with its own logins.

You import catalogue

DDEX ERN import over SFTP or S3 runs on the API plans and on Custom Distribution.

Ask every platform on your shortlist, this one included. A vendor who will not answer one of these in writing has already told you something.

01Ask what moves the bill upward. Find out which meter you cross first, whether it counts tracks, labels, artists or royalties processed, and what happens on the day you cross it.

02Ask whether you can read the full price without a call. Every LabelGrid distribution plan and API tier is on the pricing page, with Custom Distribution and Custom API showing a starting price.

03Ask whether a person reviews releases before delivery, whether that review costs extra, and which plans it covers. Ours runs on every distribution plan at no extra cost, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

04Ask what happens to your catalogue if you stop paying, and get the timing in writing. On LabelGrid a lapse of more than 60 days lets us remove or withdraw the content and suspend the account.

05Ask which DDEX ERN versions the platform supports, in which direction, and on which plans. Delivery and catalogue import are separate questions with separate answers and often separate costs.

06Ask whether there is a sandbox and exactly when you get it. Ours is enabled as part of the API upgrade, so it opens once the plan is active rather than while you are still evaluating.

07Ask whether the AI and automation tooling is open source and auditable. Ours is an MIT-licensed MCP server on npm and the public MCP registry, with a companion CLI on the same public API.

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, the API documentation is public, and Imprint is scoped and quoted at onboarding. Each OFFstep value in the comparison table above comes from one of the pages linked beneath it, read on 23 September 2026. If any of it is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.